I'm sorry to be such a stickler for these sorts of things, but here's the A-1 most important bottom line for action-adventure movies: DO NOT BORE ME! I mean, how HARD is it to thrill someone's action gland when you have a $100 million budget and some of the world's best craftsmen at your disposal? I dunno. Guess you'll have to ask Jan de Bont, because his newest flick is about a dull as dull can be. Sad that it's meant to be a wild escapist adventure flick, eh?

Yes, I loathed the first Tomb Raider flick, but before you berate me with "Oh you wanted to hate the sequel!," I'll interrupt by telling you that you're misguided and wrong. Wrong, I say, because I love nothing more than a rousing, thrilling "quest" flick. Sequel, remake, based-on-a-Disneyland-ride...it doesn't matter. I've always been a sucker for hidden treasures and wacky sidekicks and sneering villains and crazy monsters. Raised on a strict diet of Beastmasters and Krulls and Willows, I grew up knowing one monumental truth: if an adventure movie isn't boring as hell, then I'll probably love it.

And I just hated Tomb Raider 2: Lara Croft: The Quest for a Third Colon to Make This the World's Silliest Movie Title. The flick sets the stupidity meter fairly high fairly early: it was at about the 8-minute mark (when our busty heroine promptly punches a Great White shark across the snout to get its attention) that I began rolling my eyes savagely. Given the strength of my eye muscles (and the unending parade of cinematic stupidity that would follow for the next 110 minutes), I think a few moviegoers complained about my "icky eyeball noises". Blame the filmmakers.

Any cookie-cutter action sequel will invariably follow this formula: action set piece, boring plot stuff, action set piece, boring plot stuff, etc., etc. Toss in a smattering of desperate comic-relief mugging, a few scenes of wet-blanket romance and a collection of CGI images so shoddy that involuntary squawks of disbelief begin flowing out of your trachea - you're looking at one bad movie.

And did I mention how irretrievably BORING this movie is? I suppose it has something to do with how sadly serious the movie takes itself. When a movie displays a poker-face with this much consistency, it can only be an accident when the action sequences incite so much audience-snickering. I could tell my ever-rolling eyeballs were not alone as I listened to the crowd; the audience members were continuously laughing at scenes that are not meant to be funny. And when that many moviegoers can unwittingly see through a movie's paper-thin facade - you're looking at one bad movie. Oh, and it's dull.

Sure, sure; Angelina Jolie is as amazingly gorgeous as she clearly knows she is. I've no problem with staring at the gal for a few hours. If only her facial expression would change ONCE throughout the course of the movie, I wouldn't sit here and tell you that she's as wooden as a well-carved lady statue. Her every moment onscreen consists of: A) the eyebrow-arch, B) the pursing of the almost comically plump lips, C) the none-too-subtle appearance of heaving bosom and backed-up caboose. She's a poster child for female body parts. And her performance is (all together now) horribly boring.

And de Bont's not doing her any favors either. When we're not offered dime-store CGI or cardboard Temple Settings, we're attacked by action sequences that waver between "stutter-step silly" and "slo-mo stupid". Toss in a large dose of Discovery Channel-type cutaways and a screenplay that consists of NOTHING more than various characters repeating exposition about what's about to happen next - and you're looking at one bad movie.

Or maybe I've made my point, and you WON'T be looking at this one particular bad movie. I can hope so anyway. I don't know if I could take the sight of a Lara Croft: Tomb Raider: The Search for ONE Good Screenplay.

The plot sees Lara searching for items in the hopes that she'll snatch them before a painfully banal villain does. It's all very perfunctory and tediously familiar. Which is what we deserve for making the first one a hit in the first place, I suppose.